3 creativity inspiring games to kickstart your workgroup

Updated on February 10, 2015

So you're the one who loves working in a team? The one who always knew that working in a well organised group is an essential condition for reaching big goals? Or maybe you just got a new assignment at your university/workplace to do some tasks in group and had some serious activity problems at your first meeting? There are actually a lot of things you could do to improve your working group results. In this article I would like to talk about the tricks you could use to wake-up your group members at the start of the meeting.

Managing your time

Before you start thinking about the tricks used for increasing your working group efficiency you should always carefully plan your meeting first if you are the one who leads it. Schedule all your most important tasks, keep in mind that 5 minute breaks are really important for longer then 1.5hours meetings to refresh your minds. But let's get back to our topic - methods to increase productivity. You will want to use those at the start of your meetings. I like to see them as a brain warm-up techniques. We've found out that it is best to give these games somewhere around 20% of your meeting time. So if you planned a 2 hours meeting you should spend 25minutes playing some brain-teasing games. That might sound a bit long for some, but believe me, that's a worthy longterm investment. A lot of people are skeptic about playing games at all and that's a really bad attitude in my opinion. Later after using this games playing technique you will find out that your colleagues are not only involving into action much more, but also gets their out-of-the-box thinking improved overall.

3 Classic games

I have decided to only talk about some classic games in this article to give you the basic idea of this technique. Later you will want to do some more research on the internet or in your local bookstores. There are lots of games you could use here.

1.) NAME/CITY/ANIMAL/THING

Just keep in mind that the size of your group will directly impact the time required to play this game. It's best played in a group of 5-8 players. Everyone should have a sheet of paper and a pencil. Let them draw a table structured like the one in a picture shown. All members sits in circle formation and someone starts a game by naming a random letter, for example 'Z'. The objective of this game is to be as creative as you could by writing a name, city, animal and a thing starting with this letter and keeping in mind that you will only get points if no one else in your group won't have the same word written. The first who writes all the words shouts "That's it!" and starts counting to 10. After the count is over, the first round is over also. Everyone checks if no one had the same word written, if someone did, you do not get any points, same thing happens if you don't have anything written at all in that cell. You only get 1 point for unique word. You're good to start the second round of the game now. The game continues until all members had a chance to choose a letter. In the end, total number of points are calculated and the one with the biggest value becomes a great champion of this creativity inspiring competition.

2.) 5 WORDS SENTENCE

Everyone ready with sheets of paper and pencils again. Think of 5 letters you will use here. For instance: B A M S A. These are the first letters of your five words sentence. Order everyone to think of as much as possible sentences containing five words starting with letters B A M S A in order(Baboon ate my shiny apple!). Give them limited time, 5 minutes will fit well here. Now if you had your meeting time planned well you could leave those papers for your 5 minute break later, if you planned one of course. This is gonna be a great relaxation time for your group members to read them while on break, you will find out that some of those sentences are really hilarious. If you don't have a break planned, then just read them on the spot. Have fun.

3.) THINK OF A PURPOSE

This game is so much loved by the employers in creative industry all over the world to give on job interviews. Obviously a pencil and a sheet of paper required again! Usually this one is a timed event also, so you might want to give 5 minutes or so, again. Or you could play this game till someone hits a fixed amount of purposes. To start the game you have to think of an any object. A carrot for example. Now tell your colleagues to think of as much as possible purposes of a carrot(could be a substitute for a police baton?). Let the game begin here. After the time is up or someone hits a fixed amount of purposes it's up to you again to read the results on the spot or leave it for a break.

Sources

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